The upcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement is using a process that is rigged from the start. It is not being negotiated by governments for the benefit of their people, it is being negotiated by executives (or future executives/lobbyists currently in government) largely for the benefit of the giant corporations they serve. The process has these giant corporations "in the loop" but groups citizens, working people, consumers, the environment, human rights groups and especially democracy are not part of the process. That can only go one way: if you don't have a seat at the table you are on the table -- the meal.

Chile's TPP Negotiator Quits, Warns Citizens

Rodrigo Contreras, Chile's lead TPP negotiator recently up and quit to warn people of the dangers this agreement poses to everyone except the giant multinational corporations. In The New Chessboard, (English translation) Contreras warns that the TPP is solidifying multinational corporate control over the Internet, copyrights, patents (especially drug patents), and in particular warns that the giant financial interests are solidifying their current control over the regulatory process. He writes that this will block countries that are trying to "restore the space for applying financial safeguards. In these circumstances it does not makes sense to further liberalize capital flows, depriving us of legitimate tools to safeguard financial stability."

In particular, Contreras warns that smaller countries face a threat from this agreement's solidifying of the con trol of the giant multinationals, concluding,

It is critical to reject the imposition of a model designed according to realities of high-income countries, which are very different from the other participating countries.Otherwise, this agreement will become a threat for our countries: it will restrict our developmentoptions in health and education, in biological and cultural diversity, and in the design of public policiesand the transformation of our economies. It will also generate pressures from increasingly active socialmovements, who are not willing to grant a pass to governments that accept an outcome of the TPPnegotiations that limits possibilities to increase the prosperity and well-being of our countries.

Continue reading »

At least there are some Republicans in the House who actually want to get some work done...

Roll Call:

The inquiry led by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee into the slaying of four Americans at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last year has been attention-grabbing, but some senior GOP aides are worried that the partisan overtones are diverting Congress from identifying and addressing the real lessons learned from the attack.

In particular, these aides say key staffers have been overly consumed with chasing down or addressing inaccurate or unfounded accusations emerging from the inquiry.

“We have got to get past that and figure out what are we going to do going forward,” a GOP aide stressed. “Some of the accusations, I mean you wouldn’t believe some of this stuff. It’s just — I mean, you’ve got to be on Mars to come up with some of this stuff.”

...

Senior GOP aides pointed out that many of the accusations involving security and military forces turned out to be unfounded. One recent example involved a supposed whistle-blower who reported that an armed Predator drone was operating in the area, but was not called upon to respond to the Benghazi attack, an assertion labeled erroneous by Pentagon officials and Hill staffers.

“There are some real issues there and then there is just some crazy stuff,” the senior House GOP aide said. “The crazy stuff is, you know, the airman in Ramstein [Air Base, Germany,] that knew that the Predator [drone] was armed. There are no armed Predators in the region there. The [status of forces agreement] does not allow us to fly them armed, and everybody knows it.”

GOP aides described another criticism aired at a recent House Oversight Committee hearing that there were four security officers at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli who were ordered to remain in the capital for several hours after the first reports of an attack, rather than being scrambled to assist the consulate in Benghazi.

“The stand-down order was for four guys,” the GOP aide said. “When you step back and say how were the people killed at the annex, they were killed by an indirect fire mortar round. Four more M-4s [rifles] inside the annex doesn’t change that outcome. In fact, they might have just created more casualties. We have got to get down to what really happened on the DoD side and for us the DoD side was not properly postured, why?”

Continue reading »

Score one for the good guys. Sheriff Joe has had the smackdown put on him in a 142-page ruling over his penchant for persecuting Hispanics and other brown people. AZCentral:

U.S. District Judge Murray Snow issued the ruling Friday, more than eight months after a seven-day trial on the subject concluded. The trial examined longstanding allegations that Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s emphasis on immigration enforcement led deputies to target Latino drivers based on their race, and that by doing so, they violated the constitutional rights of Maricopa County residents and the sheriff’s own policies requiring constitutional policing.

Snow’s ruling will likely be appealed, as both sides promised throughout the trial to challenge whatever decision Snow rendered. However, Arpaio’s attorney said he was still reviewing the ruling Friday afternoon.

Dan Pochoda of the Arizona chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union called the ruling “a real vindication for the community. It was a terrific win — it was a very solid, comprehensive piece of work, and clearly demonstrated the unconstitutionality from top to bottom at MCSO for many years.”

The class of Hispanic citizens that brought the racial-profiling lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Office never sought monetary damages. Instead, the group asked for the court to issue injunctions barring Arpaio’s office from discriminatory policing.

Snow obliged — and indicated more remedies could be ordered in the future.

“Therefore, in the absence of further facts that would give rise to reasonable suspicion or probable cause that a violation of either federal criminal law or applicable state law is occurring, the MCSO is enjoined from (1) enforcing its LEAR policy (on checking the immigration status of people detained without state charges), (2) using Hispanic ancestry or race as any factor in making law enforcement decisions pertaining to whether a person is authorized to be in the country, and (3) unconstitutionally lengthening stops,” Snow wrote in his 142-page ruling.

Here's a suggestion for Sheriff Joe. Rather than mulling over your appeal possibilities, just give up on this, step down and let someone who isn't an ancient racist scumbag take over.

RH Reality Check: The fallacy of rape, incest, and life endangerment clauses.

Whiskey Fire:: It is not at all difficult to predict the effects of the latest scandals on any future election.

The Moderate Voice: Can Chris Christie win the GOP nomination?

Flip the News: There may be a pill for that.

Satirical Political Report: Proof that the IRS was merely incompetent.

Guest post by Batocchio. E-mail tips to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com.

Via Media Matters, if Fox News made a sexual harassment video, it would be a "how to" not a "how to avoid."

Open thread below....

New Morning
	Artist: Bob Dylan

Happy Birthday Bob Dylan!

DOWNLOADS: (238)

PLAYS: (2497)

Embed

Following President Obama's big speech this Thursday on national security and counterterrorism, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart took the opportunity to go after the Obama administration and the DOJ for their willingness to go after whistleblowers, journalists, potheads, hackers and even people who just lied on their mortgage applications, while refusing to prosecute a single Wall Street banker.

While I agree with Stewart on majority of his criticisms here, I'd use the term "journalist" lightly when it comes to anyone from Fox and as Tommy Christopher over at Mediaite pointed out, James Rosen was not just simply reporting that North Korea wanted to do more nuclear tests to draw the government scrutiny he did, as Stewart asserted here.

I'd also like to hear more about that AP story and what was going on there before rushing to judgement as well, although I think the bigger argument ought to be over all of our privacy rights and just how much of that has been thrown out the window.

In an age following the hysteria right after 9-11 and the Patriot Act and with the NSA pretty well out of control along with most corporations who aren't kept in check with protecting our private information, I'm glad to see there is at long at last some attention being drawn to the subject.

It's pitiful that it took some members of our corporate media finally being subjected to what sadly is potentially perfectly legal overreach for them to care at all about what's been happening to a whole bunch of our citizens for years on end now, and well before Barack Obama was elected president. Maybe they could do something constructive like calling for members of Congress and President Obama to roll back some of the horrid legislation that was passed during the Bush administration. But then, who am I kidding... right? They'd rather just use this as an excuse to pile on with the scandal-mongering we've seen over the last half a year or so.

But back to The Daily Show segment above, when it comes to criticism about these Wall Street bankers run amok and the fact that not a one of them has ever gone to jail, while they're aggressively going after things like medical marijuana dispensaries, or someone who lied about their income on their mortgage papers, or whistleblowers who are actually trying to uncover government malfeasance, and not the Benghazi/IRS Tourette syndrome scandal-mongering we've been subjected to -- by all means, have at them Jon Stewart.

Luckily for Erick (who seems to believe people "become" gay, the doughy rube), there are still a few societies left on the planet that he might feel more comfortable raising his son in -- like Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Uganda.

Should we buy him a ticket?

This reminds us that the big "GOP Rebranding" project I keep reading about -- which is supposed to usher in a more libertarian, less hateful Republicanism -- won't amount to much until the party can purge the Teamams like Erickson. Good luck with that, guys.

Barry Goldwater weeps.

It's like they say: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Especially when it comes to right-wing extremists.

As Karoli reported yesterday, now the conspiracy theorists are claiming that President Obama deliberately created the killer tornadoes that swept Oklahoma last week, with Alex Jones (of course) leading the way.

It's not just Jones. Some Oklahoma versions of Truther nutcases, as Alexander Abad-Santos reports at The Atlantic, are also jumping aboard with a variation on Jones' theory:

So, yes, the Oklahoma tornado truthers claim the administration whipped up a storm that killed 24 people through HAARP, the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, in Alaska. Here's a screen grab of a contributor post on Before It's News, a citizen journalist website that's home to many of these conspiracy theories, from a contributor who says this is "compelling evidence" that HAARP is at work:

As Gawker's Ken Layne writes, the "stated goal of HAARP is to study the ionosphere and how the spectrum of radio waves works within these upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere." Essentially, HAARP researches communications. But there are budding conspiracy theories that HAARP could be ultimately used to disrupt the ionosphere, and manipulate weather patterns. As one Redditor pointed out, one of the permutations of the conspiracy theory in Moore is that the left-wing financier George "the Sorcerer" Soros is behind all of this.

Actually, the HAARP theory has been around since about 1994, when it was being avidly promoted by Militia of Montana founder John Trochmann. Here's how he explained it to his audience at a militia meeting in western Washington in 1995, as I reported it in my first book, In God's Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest:

Trochmann then turns on the overhead projector and puts on the cover page. It reads: ``Enemies, Foreign and Domestic: Part I -- The Problem.’’ A few words: ``You’ll have to excuse me, I’m going to fly right through this, because it takes about an hour and a half.’’ He flips to the next sheet. It’s the cover of a military journal with a story about international armed forces cooperating under United Nations auspices, and the cover illustration shows a number of nations’ flags, including the Stars and Stripes, all subordinately positioned beneath a U.N. flag.

Continue reading »

You have to see this. Bob Fitzsimmonds is the treasurer of the Republican Party of Virginia who served as Ken Cuccinelli's legislative aide in the Senate, and is a close adviser to the man who very well may be Virginia's next governor:

1. Starting at 7:45, Fitzsimmonds starts ranting about sex education and "the spread of STDs." He claims that "HIV's kind of hard to catch, abortion happens if you get pregnant, but we're on the trajectory for 50% of the American people to have herpes... and that is a profound not only health but sociological crisis that's facing this country, and it's not even as prevalent as HPV." Fitzsimmonds adds, "we have a disease [HPV] out there that's killing women more than HIV is, and we don't even talk about it."

Hmmm...actually we do talk about vaccinating young people against HPV (see this video of Del. Patrick Hope, for instance) but isn't Cuccinelli against that?

2. Starting at 9:10, Fitzsimmonds claims, "We have an entire generation of children who are in their teens, 50% of the ones that are sexually active have an STD...we never lived with this kind of crisis; so I think we absolutely have to address that, and I think Ken will do it." Alrighty then.

Continue reading »